Quest Kenmare Adventure race
On Saturday the 2nd of March threeBlackwater Triathlon Club athletes travelled to Kerry to take part in the QuestKenmare Adventure Race. There were three distances available to competitors onthe day: the 29km ‘Challenge’ event, the 44km ‘Sport’ distance, and for themore extreme athletes, the 72km ‘Expert’ race. Over 1200 athletes braved theroads and mountains of Kerry on the day, despite the less than favourableconditions. The BTC crew, Justin Ryan, Peter O’Brien and Adrian Collins allopted to take on the ‘Expert’ race. Quest Kenmare describes itself as “An epicadventure along the Wild Atlantic Way featuring the amazing mountains of theBeara Peninsula and boutique charm of Kenmare Town.” They didn’t mention thewind and the rain and the cold for some reason. Usually the race consists ofthree elements; cycling, running and kayaking. Unfortunately on Saturday thewinds were so high that the organisers had to cancel the kayaking element dieto safety considerations. The daystarted with a short procession out of the town followed by a 25km cycle withsome extremely difficult climbs, including the infamous Moll’s gap. This wasfollowed by a challenging 8km trail run with plenty of treacherous footing and somevery cold streams to overcome. Next it was back on the bike and 21km ofextremely dangerous descents and a lovely climb up to T2 at the bottom of Eskmountain. On Esk mountain the athletes were faced with another 8km trail run.This section would probably have been better described as a trail/bog run ashalf of the run took place on trails while the other half had the competitorswading through bogs. Some of the terrain was extremely steep and everyone hadto slow down to a walk to find footing. Even then there were more than a fewfalls although the organisers had plenty of people posted along the route toguide and assist the athletes on the day. Having survived the bogs and trailsof Esk mountain the competitors got back to T2 for a for a relatively uneventful 13km back toKenmare on the bike and then a 1.5km run to the finish line. Conditions on theday were absolutely terrible; hail, rain and gales of wind. Despite this allthree of the BTC crew managed to finish the race. Justin was the first of theBlackwater contingent home, finishing in 10th place overall in aremarkable time of 3:50. Peter andAdrian, who were also joined by Adrian’s brother Brendan, finished together in5 hours and 11 minutes. All three athletes enjoyed the event, even though theywere all borderline hypothermic by the end! It was a well run and wellorganised event even if the conditions meant that it became more like anultra-Duathlon on the day. Well done to the organisers and especially thosebrave enough to take part.